


Shade Of You

by amberwoods



Category: Fairy Tail
Genre: Artist AU, F/M, Fluff, Modern AU, gardener au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-02
Updated: 2016-05-02
Packaged: 2018-06-05 23:56:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6728476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amberwoods/pseuds/amberwoods
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Gray - professional painter - hired a gardener, he expected some buff, middle-aged dude with rough hands and dirt on his face. So he is extremely surprised when, instead, he opens the door to a small, blue-haired young lady with the sweetest smile he’s seen in years. </p><p>Or, the one where Gray can't stop sketching his pretty gardener on post-its.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shade Of You

When he hired a gardener, he expected some buff, middle-aged dude with rough hands and dirt on his face. So he is extremely surprised when, instead, he opens the door to a small, blue-haired young lady with the sweetest smile he’s seen in years.

“H-hi,” he stammers.

“Good afternoon, mister Fullbuster,” she greets him kindly, “My name is Juvia Lockser, I am here for the garden.”

“Ah, y-yes.” He coughs in his fist to regain his cool. “I’ve been expecting you.” His eyes scan the woman in front of him again.

 _This_ is his gardener? She looks like a pre-school teacher.

“Do you want something to drink?” Wow. He hasn’t even invited her in yet. This is going great.

“I don’t want to inconvenience you,” she says with a warm smile, “You can just show me to the garden, if you like. I will get started immediately.”

He nods briskly and opens the door a little wider so she can get in. She looks around curiously with big, genuine eyes and the small smile still on her face. He notices her eyes linger on the painting he did on the city hall of Magnolia. It is one of his better works, admittedly. It’s why he’s put it up in his hallway.

“Do you like it?” he asks her.

“It’s beautiful,” she answers with an absent-minded nod. She is watching the painting closely, almost as if she’d like to touch it.

“It was hassle to paint, though,” he comments, “I sat in front of that building for hours.”

She turns towards him swiftly, her blue hair following her face with a sweep. Her eyes are big and shocked. “You made this?”

He tries not to show that he feels kind of proud. “Yes.”

“You’re an artist?”

“A painter, yes.”

“That’s so wonderful…!” She smiles brightly at him, a warm, gentle smile that makes him feel like he’s been slapped in the face with a bouquet of flowers.

“Yeah,” he stammers, “It’s nice.”

“I really admire artists,” she tells him.

“Well,” he says carefully, “You create gardens, right? I suppose that kind of makes you an artist too.”

The cutest blush runs over her cheeks. “An artist? Me?”

“Yeah,” he repeats, more determinedly this time, “Totally.”

Wow. So eloquent, Gray. Way to go.

“Shall we move on?” he quickly adds, and he gestures at the door to his living room.

“Oh, yes! I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright.”

What is he even doing?

“So, it’s mostly just the roses,” he says as he leads her into his living room, “Last year I tried it myself, but I didn’t have too much time and they… well, it didn’t work out.”

The bluenette nods seriously and is immediately professional again. “Yes, roses can be a little hard to grow. It’s important to give the roots enough space.”

“That’s probably where I went wrong.” He walks up to the glass door the leads into his garden and opens it. “Through here,” he tells her.

She nods and follows him outside, onto his veranda. “Your garden is wonderful,” she says while looking around. She has an excited look on her face. He likes it.

“Yeah,” he says with a smile, “It was one of the reasons I bought this place.”

She looks at him. “Are you a big lover of flowers?”

“Lover…” He runs a hand through his dark hair. “They’re beautiful.”

“I agree,” she smiles while she turns back to the garden.

He watches her look at his garden, and he knows he is in trouble.

 

Before the week is through, he’s sketching her. To be honest, entire elaborate pieces on her have crossed his mind in the few hours he’s been able to look at her, but he’s been actively suppressing those. He is a professional artist, not a creep leering at his gorgeous gardener and secretly painting her. Nevertheless, no matter how hard he tries, he can’t stop himself from subconsciously sketching her in the corner of his notes or on a post-it in the kitchen. 

She’s just so beautiful.

After thinking twice, he’s realised that being a gardener actually really suits her. When she’s out in the garden with the flowers, it’s like she’s absorbed into the place. Although she’s wearing worn, practical clothes, she looks like a flower herself with her bright blue curls and her perfect skin. God, he’d like to paint on that skin…

Wow. Stop right there.

Gray forces himself to look away from the woman working in his garden. She’s almost finished, he thinks. She spent the first two days digging holes in the ground for the roses, and today she’s finally brought them in. She’s planting them now and the holes are steadily being filled. It could be that she will take another day finishing it all up, but this may also very well be the last day she comes to work. He doesn’t know how he feels about that.

He hasn’t only been staring at her from the window of his office, of course (it’s the first time he’s regretted placing his desk with a view on his garden). He’s actually talked to her too. He brings her something to drink about three times a day when she’s working and always offers her a snack, which she rarely accepts. She drinks her coffee with two cubes of sugar and always picks the cookie with chocolate in it. It’s adorable.

He curses when he notices that the outline of her face has _once again_ appeared on his paper. With a sigh he throws down his pencil. This is getting out of hand. He does _not_ have time to fall in love with a total stranger. Or maybe he’s got the time, but not the emotional availability. Besides, he doesn’t really get the idea that it’s mutual. She just comes, works in the garden, talks to him, smiles at him, laughs at his jokes and leaves again when she’s done enough for the day.

But against his better judgement, he gets up from his desk chair, opens the window and calls out to her. “Juvia!”

The woman looks up and smiles at him. The way she’s sitting there, between the flowers, her hands covered in dirt and stripes of sand on her forehead from when she wiped off some sweat with the back of her hand, is mesmerizing. The picture burns itself into his mind.

“Do you need anything? Something to drink?” he adds.

Her smile widens. “I’d like that!” she calls back.

So there he goes again, into his kitchen, to his coffee machine, pressing the red button. He gets out a cup for her while he’s waiting for the thing to prepare, then changes his mind and gets out a cup for himself as well. When the coffee machine is ready to go, he places the cups underneath it and presses another button, after which the coffee starts flowing. He grabs the sugar from his counter (he was too lazy to put it away again after the last time she visited) and opens the door to his veranda beforehand, so he won’t have a problem when he’s carrying two cups of coffee in a few moments. Involuntarily, he lingers in the doorway, his eyes on Juvia’s back between the flowers.

A beep from the coffee machine pulls him back and he picks up the cups to take them outside. There’s a small garden table on his veranda – Italian style – and he sits down there, the two cups in front of him. He doesn’t call her over yet, though. She looks too concentrated. It’s not the right moment to interrupt her. Only when she’s looking down on her newly planted roses with a satisfied smile, he calls out to her again. “Coffee’s ready!”

When she turns around with a bright smile and starts walking towards him, another view of a painting shoots across his mind. He’d use soft colours and blur the flowers a bit, so that they’d become a unity of colours and her, sharp, clear, walking through them like she’s the one that makes them blossom.

Alright, cut it out. You’re not doing that painting.

She sits down in front of him with a content sigh and folds her hands in her lap. “Thank you, Gray,” she says while looking him straight in the eye. As always, her using his name sends a lightning bolt through him.

He coughs in his fist. “You’re welcome. Enjoy.”

Her delicate fingers, covered in dirt, pick up the coffee cup and bring it to her lips. She blows on the hot substance and Gray has to tear his eyes away.

“So, how’s it coming along?” he asks while he picks up his own cup. It’s still hot, but he’s lost his soul to caffeine a long time ago, so he doesn’t really care that he might burn his tongue.

Juvia smiles at him. “Great! I’ve planted half the roses now. I’ll do the rest in a bit, and I’ll come to check on them again next week just to be sure. That should do the trick!”

So that’s it, then. One more time and she’ll be gone. It’ll be over.

The realisation dawns on him like a tidal wave. He doesn’t want that. He doesn’t want this to be over. He doesn’t want to never see her again.

Before he knows what he’s doing, he’s opened his mouth.

“Actually, I was wondering if I could do a painting of you.”

Juvia’s blue eyes widen and she looks at him speechlessly. “A-a painting?” she then stutters.

Gray’s thoughts are one continuous panicked scream, but somehow he manages to get some words out. “Yeah. I’d pay you, of course. It’s just that I haven’t really had a good model in a while, and, well, you’re pretty inspiring.”

_What did he just say?_

A crimson blush runs over Juvia’s cheeks and she looks down at her cup. Gray feels his heart shrink up. That was definitely a mistake, a total mistake.

“I…” Juvia eventually says, “I, well, yes, I think, I think I could do that.”

Gray freezes. Did she… Did she just say yes?

“Are you sure?” he asks, unable to keep the surprise out of his voice.

Juvia looks up again. She sees her employer sitting in front of her with his cup of coffee, frozen in his place, obvious shock in his eyes. He’d probably never expected her to say yes. But he didn’t look like it was a bother to him. On the contrary.

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Well, if I can help…”

“It would be a great help!” Gray smiles widely at her. “Thank you, Juvia.”

Now, at least, he could get one of these paintings out of his head and onto a canvas. And he could see her again. He could see her again!

Juvia is a little taken back by his joy. Or, by the sight of his joy. By how it looks on him. It makes her chest feel dangerously warm.

For a while, the two people sip from their hot coffee in silence – Juvia with a rapidly beating heart, Gray ecstatic. Both unaware. Then the silence becomes awkward, and Juvia tries to fill it.

“How is your commission piece going?”

He has told her about the commission he is doing for a regular customer of his. One of his few. When they say an artist’s job doesn’t pay too well, they’re not lying. Luckily, Gray’s adoptive mother is rather well-off. Since his adoptive brother Lyon has become the successor of her martial arts studio, Gray has had all the space and money to follow his dream and become a full-time painter. Even if it doesn’t pay well.

Gray smiles at her. “It’s going pretty well.” _When I’m not sketching you by accident_. “I think I’ll be able to finish it within a week.”

She smiles back. “I think the amount of time you put into your work is really amazing.”

Gray laughs. “Says the woman who’s been stuck in the dirt of my garden for hours these past few weeks.”

Juvia giggles. “I guess that’s what passion does to you, isn’t it?”

“It is.” Gray nods.

“The piece… I’ll be helping with…” she then starts carefully. Gray immediately freezes up again, but does his best not to show it. “Do you… have any idea what it’ll be on yet?”

“Oh!” Of course she’d want to know that. “I’m still doubting, to be honest. I think you’d make a good Ophelia, but that might be too… macabre. Besides, there’s a long history of Ophelia being romanticised in art. Or, well, her dead body. I don’t really want to fall into that trap. So maybe I could do a different sort of painting on her. Portray her – you – as the girl from before Shakespeare’s play starts. Then again, I also think a painting on Persephone could really work with you as the model.”

“The daughter of Demeter? Hades’ wife?” Juvia asks.

“Yes,” he tells her with a smile, “I think that would be beautiful. So, I’m not sure yet. Let me think about it.”

“Yes! Yes, of course!” she says hastily, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pressure you, I was just curious.”

“No, that’s alright, I don’t mind.”

Juvia finished her coffee and gets up. “Well, I’ll get back to my roses then. I mean. _Your_ roses. Not mine.” She laughs nervously.

It’s the first time Gray sees her like this. Embarrassed, nervous, shy. He wonders what he did to incite those feelings. He wonders if he could do it again.

“Yes, of course,” he says, “Good luck, Juvia.”

What a weird thing to tell her.

Yet she smiles. “You too, Gray.”She nods one more time and then takes off into her realm of flowers again.

Gray stays at the coffee table for a moment longer, but then pic ks up the empty cups and takes them back inside. Only then does his heart start beating out of his chest. Only then does he realise just how deep he’s in. And it terrifies him, but it’s liberating. It’s been so long since he’s felt this way. He never knew how much he was longing for it. The thrill of falling.

He walks back to his workplace and sits down behind his desk. His eyes find her form through the window easily and he watches as she takes up the plants and digs through the dirt. Without looking away, his fingers pick up a pencil and before he knows it he’s drawing the outline of her face on a post-it again.

For the first time, he lets it happen.

**Author's Note:**

> I might write a second part to this where he actually paints her! If I do, do you think he should paint her as Ophelia or as Persephone? Leave a comment with your opinion!! Anyhow, thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed :)


End file.
